Israel News

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s popularity edged up in the polls this week following a hastily called press conference at which he disclosed that he had prostate cancer but intended to attend the Israeli-Palestinian summit meeting later this year in Annapolis, Md., before having surgery to cut out the cancer.

Tel Aviv — The iconic but crumbling Bauhaus building just off the Ayalon freeway in south Tel Aviv resembles the bridge of a ship, a tribute to the Jewish immigrants who reached pre-state Israel in boats.

In the last three months, an abandoned basement pub and a construction site at the same building have become a makeshift absorption center for dozens of illegal African migrants and an embodiment of Israel’s most sensitive immigration dilemmas as the state nears its 60th anniversary.

Netiv Ha’asara, Israel — Israel’s dilemma over using fuel and gas supplies to punish Gazans for rocket fire came into sharp focus this week when a salvo of five mortar shells slammed down on this farming cooperative near the Gaza border.

Despite a government decision to impose the controversial sanctions to deter Palestinian militants from similar attacks in the future, experts and locals doubted whether cutting electricity in Gaza would contain the cross-border strikes.

The key organizer of a campaign to deny tenure to a Barnard College professor seen by some as virulently anti-Israel acknowledged this week that her petition against the professor may not have quoted the book completely accurately.
Barnard alumna Paula Stern, who now lives in an Israeli settlement community on the West Bank, acknowledged Tuesday that her petition —signed now by more than 2,500 people — incorrectly quotes from Abu El-Haj’s book in charging she is grossly ignorant of Jerusalem geography.

Jerusalem — As much as he’s been wanting to complete his master’s degree in history, David Graniewitz would rather be standing in front of a classroom, teaching history or English to junior high and high school students.

Instead Graniewitz, who has taught in Israeli secondary schools for almost 20 years, has spent the past couple of weeks glued to his kitchen table, focusing — or trying to focus — on his own studies.

What organizers claim is an unprecedented coalition of Jewish and Evangelical Christian groups is taking shape to fight any Israeli compromises on the status of Jerusalem at next month’s Annapolis peace summit.
And while no major non-Orthodox group has endorsed the effort, several top Jewish leaders said the anti-compromise push could get real traction from a community with strong religious and emotional connections to the city.